Chaos of Disciplines

E-book $10.00 to $32.00About E-booksISBN: 9780226001050
Published
July 2010

In this vital new study, Andrew Abbott presents a fresh and daring analysis of the evolution and development of the social sciences. Chaos of Disciplines reconsiders how knowledge actually changes and advances. Challenging the accepted belief that social sciences are in a perpetual state of progress, Abbott contends that disciplines instead cycle around an inevitable pattern of core principles. New schools of thought, then, are less a reaction to an established order than they are a reinvention of fundamental concepts. Chaos of Disciplines uses fractals to explain the patterns of disciplines, and then applies them to key debates that surround the social sciences. Abbott argues that knowledge in different disciplines is organized by common oppositions that function at any level of theoretical or methodological scale. Opposing perspectives of thought and method, then, in fields ranging from history, sociology, and literature, are to the contrary, radically similar; much like fractals, they are each mutual reflections of their own distinctions.

Part 1 Self-Similarity in Social Science1 The Chaos of Disciplines2 The Duality of Stress3 The Fraction of ConstructionAppendix: A History of "Social Construction" to 19904 The Unity of History5 The Context of DisciplinesPart 2 Two Essays on Self-Similarity6 Self-Similar Social Structures Appendix: Fractal Scales7 The Selfishness of Men

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